In Trusting the Entire Body of Work: The April Slumpers

With just a little more than a month of the season to go, it’s easy to forget who the April heroes and zeroes were. You complained when your supposed-to-be-star stunk up the joint in April, but now that it’s the end of August and he’s doing what you expected, you are thankful you didn’t foolishly drop the player. Let’s look at some of April’s biggest disappointments that have been as good as advertised since the calendar flipped to May. These examples remind us to trust the hitter’s entire body of work, not just the last couple of weeks.

I used wOBA to determine the April slumpers and compared the metric to the rest of the season mark.

I dove into Kole Calhoun’s resurgence a couple of weeks ago and it has been pretty remarkable. After returning from injury, he has transformed himself into an extreme fly ball hitter. That alone isn’t helpful if you’re a weakling, but Calhoun has posted a career best HR/FB rate. Since his BABIP has remained low, it’s easy to look at his season line and be unimpressed. But that should rebound somewhat, and if the new fly ball ways stick, he could be severely undervalued next year.

You didn’t really think that at age 28, the decline had begun for Anthony Rizzo, did you? It’s doubtful that anyone outright dropped him, but I bet many sold low by the end of the month. For whatever reason, everything was off with Rizzo in April, including an uncharacteristically minuscule walk rate. Since, he has struck out so infrequently that now his strikeout rate is at a career low. His home run power is back to normal as well. Essentially, he has been exactly who you thought you drafted once April ended. Because of the slow start, though, his season line is likely to end up a bit disappointing and it’s probably his string of four straight seasons with 30+ homers will come to an end. All that means that next season he might come the cheapest he has in years.

Man, Yasiel Puig is a difficult player to peg. While his April walk and strikeout rates were normal, his BABIP was weak and he didn’t hit his first homer until May 13! Since April, his BABIP has rebounded and home run power returned. One of the bonuses is that he has posted his best stolen base per plate appearance rate of his career. It surprises me that he continues to run, as he had never been a very good base-stealer.

Of everyone on this list, Brandon Crawford may have been the easiest one to convince yourself he was okay to drop. After a 2015 home run breakout where he exceeded 20 long balls for the first time, he has remained in the low teens ever since. With such apparently limited upside, why bother holding on if he’s not hitting? Welp, because now he is. He has improved his walk and strikeout rates, BABIP, and HR/FB rate since April, and his wOBA since would be the highest of his career. So if you drafted him, then he’s doing what you expected now from a season long perspective.

When a 35 year old like Edwin Encarnacion opens April poorly, the knee-jerk reaction is that “uh oh, he might be done as a productive hitter.” Older players can fall off the table rapidly with no signs of impending doom. Encarnacion certainly had his warning signs, so it would have been easy to believe the end was near. He stopped walking, his strikeout rate skyrocketed, and his balls in play refused to fall for hits at an acceptable rate. Oops. Since April, all his metrics have been completely normal and exactly what was expected, with no age-related decline.

Do you remember how badly Matt Carpenter opened the season? He was walking like crazy, but his strikeout rate jumped to a career worst, his home run power was MIA, and he couldn’t buy a hit on his balls in play. And now he owns the fifth highest WAR in the National League and 14th highest in baseball. WOAH. That’s quite the turnaround. While his hits started to fall at a normal rate again, it’s been all about the home run power. His 25% HR/FB rate since April is more than double his season mark last year! And this is at age 32! His full season Hard% on fly balls ranks sixth in baseball, backing up his career best HR/FB rate.